London - SAS Global Communications, an international provider of managed network and professional services, today announced that it has renewed its managed services contract with BC Partners, a leading private equity firm.

BC Partners has been a managed services client of SAS's for over ten years since first commissioning the company in 1999 to carry out a series of systems integration projects across its regional operations in Europe and the US.

“In 1999, we were entering a major phase of growth with the business and we needed to consolidate our IT operations to support it,” said Mike Pritchard, Group Financial Controller for BC Partners. “The pace of what we did was changing and this meant that our dependence on IT systems was increasing.”

After successfully completing its first project for the company, BC Partners invited SAS to put forward a proposal for managing all of its IT systems.

“We believed we would get a better service by paying for specialist support,” said Mike. “We are experts in what we do and the same applies to SAS which was a company that shared our values in terms of delivery and was a suitable size relative to us.”

BC Partners was also keen to protect its corporate knowledge and saw that by outsourcing the management of its IT to a team of people at SAS, it would be mitigating any losses incurred through staff leaving.

Today, the entire infrastructure is managed by a team of five engineering and support staff from SAS whose time is divided between BC Partners’ London headquarters and SAS's West Sussex network operations centre.

As part of its services agreement, SAS provides proactive 24/7 monitoring, management and support of all IP devices on the BC Partners’ estate, including the company’s WAN and local area networks, as well as its wireless technologies, operating systems and servers.

Commenting on the changes that have occurred over the last ten years for BC Partners, Mike said:“Probably the biggest change in our business has been our dependence on email and video conferencing; we now need core systems functionality 99.9 percent of the time. This reliance on email and video conferencing is only possible because of the stability of the infrastructure that SAS provides.”

“Developing a strong and enduring relationship with clients is essential to the growth of any managed services provider,” said Charles Davis CEO for SAS Global Communications. “You are able to learn so much more about your client’s business and can be far more effective and give much better advice and support.”

“Our relationship with BC Partners has not only benefited its business, it has also helped to shape ours. By accepting and resolving client issues that go beyond the scope of traditional system integrators and VARs, we have become truly consultative to our customers.”